Memory effect of appliance rebate programme: evidence from a lab experiment

This paper aims to check in a controlled environment for evidence of the memory effect found in Solà et al. (2021b). We considered different risk framings that could lead to different cognitive processes, and therefore different appliance purchasing decisions. The experiment was staged at the Bilbao Laboratory of Experimental Analysis (Bilbao-Labean) in March 2022 and 166 subjects took part, in 4 different sessions. This lab experiment included 3 different parts: (i) a risk-elicitation task to measure subject preferences; (ii) a role-playing exercise to check for evidence of the memory effect in the purchasing decision of a fridge; (iii) a post-experiment survey to control for differences in the choices of participants and explain their decisions as well as other personal factors (e.g. socio-demographic factors). The design of the experiment staged enables the factors that nudge consumers towards investing in EE to be explained. The results show that different characteristics such as age and social class may affect consumer decision-making. The older a participant is, the more likely they are to buy energy-efficient fridges and the less likely it is that RENOVE will have any effect. This could be because older people tend to have a higher economic status and could therefore invest more in EE. Social class has a negative impact on the memory effect but a positive impact on purchasing energy-efficient fridges. The decision criteria underlying the choices made in the lab experiment (e.g. energy consumption criteria, lifetime energy cost criteria, etc) were also significant.